Chinese education start-up Liulishuo has developed what it calls the world's first artificial intelligence English teacher.

After years spent gathering data on Chinese people speaking English, the firm employed deep learning to create personalized English courses powered by AI. Available on the firm's mobile app, the courses were launched in 2016 and boast around 50 million registered users.

Schools have long suffered from a short supply of highly qualified teachers, he said, but now "technology, especially AI and mobile internet, has enabled us to extract the best out of the best teachers."

"We're seeing a tidal shift here," he added.

Wang, a former Google product manager, says Liulishuo will eventually move on to other languages as it looks to build "the most intelligent and efficient AI language teacher."